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TARTLETS (another way)
Roll out the pastry to the thickness of a quarter of an inch. Stamp it out in an even number of rounds of uniform size, and make half of these into rings by pressing a small cutter quite through the centre of them. Moisten the edges of the rounds, place the rings upon them, and press them tightly together. Put the tartlets on a baking-tin, and bake them in a well-heated oven. As soon as they are done enough, take them out of the oven, and before they are cool fill them with jam or marmalade. Lay a pastry ornament or a spoonful of whipped cream on the top, and they are ready for serving. Time to bake, about twelve minutes. Probable cost, 1d. each.
A vol-au-vent method scaled down: two discs of pastry baked as one, the upper pierced to form a wall that holds jam after baking rather than during it. Nothing here is difficult, but the pastry choice and the oven heat decide whether you get a case or a biscuit.
- Use puff or rough puffThe recipe does not say which pastry, but a ring pressed onto a round only rises into a wall if the pastry laminates. Shortcrust will simply bake flat and give you a jam-topped biscuit.
- "A well-heated oven"For puff pastry that means a hot oven, somewhere around 425-450F (220-230C) in modern terms, though the book gives no temperature. Puff pastry needs the initial blast to turn its water to steam; in a moderate oven the butter runs out before the layers can lift, and twelve minutes will not be enough.
- A quarter of an inch is thickThat is about 6 mm, generous by modern habit. Roll the bases to the full thickness and, if you like a lighter case, the rings a little thinner.
- Moisten with water, not eggMoisten the edges -- the recipe does not say with what; water is enough to weld the ring to the round. Keep any egg wash off the cut edges of the ring, since it glues the layers shut and stops the sides rising.
- Chill before bakingNot in the original, but twenty minutes in the fridge after assembly keeps the rings from sliding and gives a much straighter wall.
- The small centresThe discs stamped from the middle of the rings can be baked alongside and set on top, though the recipe does not say that this is the "pastry ornament" it calls for.
- Fill warm, serve coolWarm jam settles into the case and sets as it cools, which is the point of filling before they are cold. Whipped cream, if used, goes on only once the pastry is fully cool.
- Yield and costCost -- "1d. each" is a penny apiece in pre-decimal money.
Cassell's gives tartlets several times over, and building a case from a disc and a ring is the same trick used for vol-au-vents and bouchees, borrowed from French practice and familiar in British confectionery by the later nineteenth century. Filling after baking, rather than baking the jam in, keeps the fruit bright and the pastry crisp. The jam-or-marmalade instruction reflects a period when both were standard preserves in a well-stocked store cupboard.